Automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) are commonly used in healthcare facilities, such as hospitals, to provide healthcare professionals, such as nurses, with automated access to medication without requiring the pharmacy to fill patient-specific cassettes of unit-dose medications, which would then have to be delivered to the particular nursing unit and stored in non-automated medication cabinets or carts. In contrast, ADCs are computerized drug storage devices that allow nurses to automatically dispense medications to fill prescriptions near point of care, while at the same time tracking and controlling drug distribution.
Although ADCs have provided nurses with quicker and easier access to a patient's medications, the increasing numbers of patients who are admitted to healthcare facilities each year, coupled with the budgetary constraints on hiring additional healthcare professionals to care for these patients, puts pressure on nurses to multi-task when performing certain work functions so as to have as much time as possible to directly interact with patients. It is, therefore, becoming more commonplace for nurses to dispense medication for more than one patient during a single interaction with an ADC in order to avoid multiple trips to the ADC over a given time period. This creates the potential for errors when administering the medication to the patients. In other words, because at any given time the nurse may be carrying multiple medications for multiple patients with different conditions, there is a risk that the wrong medication may be given to the wrong patient.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved system and method for dispensing medication that allows healthcare professionals to securely transport dispensed medication so as to minimize the risk of inaccurately administering the medication.